I like and want to use normally low scatering configurations because all is more clear. But the problem when go below 0.20 is the darkness everywhere. I adjusted in 0.25 and this allow me to put exposure lower. This end up in a beautiful snow again and not so dark shadows. But if i can touch glow a little little bit i will adjust better. Ground reflectance i find very necesary for maintain the dark shadows not too much dark.

I am testing lots of tricks and have almost a perfect result already. Maybe i will post it tomorrow..

Its a pity i cant touch snow texture directly. It would be a way to the solution easily too. But Gloom will do the trick.

Wow, I absolutely love that video, love the idea of manipulating the entire landscape of Earth like you do in Sim City 4 god mode or something, and adding islands or mountains wherever you want.

How long until Outerra will have such direct terrain manipulation on small and large scale, if its even planned? Also, is there anything else like Proland right now out there or will I have no other option and have to download that enormous 20GB Earth terrain dataset if I want to try out the demo and the terrain manipulation for myself like it says on their site.

Wow, I absolutely love that video, love the idea of manipulating the entire landscape of Earth like you do in Sim City 4 god mode or something, and adding islands or mountains wherever you want.

How long until Outerra will have such direct terrain manipulation on small and large scale, if its even planned? Also, is there anything else like Proland right now out there or will I have no other option and have to download that enormous 20GB Earth terrain dataset if I want to try out the demo and the terrain manipulation for myself like it says on their site.

This was asked by me previously and here is the reply. As for Proland, its kind of a pain in the butt getting it to work, though not as much as it use to be. To see the earth though, yes, you will need that huge download.

Ah so it seems like for now we have the scenery editor but later on larger scale terrain manipulation may come. I'm fine with that, I love the scene editor right now for its sheer ease of use and possibilities, I can wait for a "planet sculptor" feature later (I love that term), I have always wanted to try something like Sim City 4's terrain sculpting applied on a much larger scale and Outerra seems like the perfect game for it. The Middle Earth map is kind of a taste of what might be possible in the future maybe, but that was achieved using heightmaps or some process like that which I'm not familiar with, but editing the terrain directly like the way you can do now with the roads/level editor on the fly will be incredible.

Indeed, I tried it just now, downloaded the demo files off the site without the Earth data-set yet, just to test if it will work and well it didn't, told me I was missing binaries, all of the ones in the bin folder, so I transferred them all to the demo directory and then it would load and immediately freeze on command prompt.

Ah so it seems like for now we have the scenery editor but later on larger scale terrain manipulation may come. I'm fine with that, I love the scene editor right now for its sheer ease of use and possibilities, I can wait for a "planet sculptor" feature later (I love that term), I have always wanted to try something like Sim City 4's terrain sculpting applied on a much larger scale and Outerra seems like the perfect game for it. The Middle Earth map is kind of a taste of what might be possible in the future maybe, but that was achieved using heightmaps or some process like that which I'm not familiar with, but editing the terrain directly like the way you can do now with the roads/level editor on the fly will be incredible.

Indeed, I tried it just now, downloaded the demo files off the site without the Earth data-set yet, just to test if it will work and well it didn't, told me I was missing binaries, all of the ones in the bin folder, so I transferred them all to the demo directory and then it would load and immediately freeze on command prompt.

Oceans have colors computed from light scattering, that depends on the water depth. Besides, would you really want water color from Blue Marble, where it's clearly stated that it's been done that way just to make the oceans more interesting to look at when the BM data are used as maps. Real color is plain, except for shallow seas.OT uses physical phenomena rendering to make it parametric. One thing that would be compatible with OT way would be adding maps that define, for example, how much bio stuff is in the sea (amount of oxygen in upper parts and stuff like that) so it can be included in the computation.

The data are wavelet-compressed so the size should be much smaller than that.

Landsat data are available for free, but the amount of processing needed is huge. The main problem are the clouds and the need to stitch the satellite scans together in seamless way. There are providers that offer the processed data, like TruEarth, but the prices start from $39,950 for uncompressed global data. GeoSage has better prices, however these seem to contain many visual artifacts.

We already got data for global 30m forest coverage and water bodies. These also happen to contain the red band of satellite data (together with near-infrared that's used for vegetation density computation), and it may be possible to use it to refine the 500m MODIS color data with it.

No, I meant you do not have to modify the input data, I wouldn't even want an arbitrarily modified surface reflectance to be baked in. The modifications should be expressed in the form of some filter coefficients acting on the source surface reflectance data. A post-processing, because that's basically what you want: you want to alter the real reflectance data to suit your taste. I do not know which filter coefficients I'll be able to expose yet, but I guess it generally could be a 4x4 matrix that multiplies the input YUV/veg color vector, or in a simple form a bias and multiplier for each color component. No simple 'shoping

I was seeing earth pics from the iss and its true, the sea in blue marble is exagerated.. So you are right in that. No sense at all to fake it. No, my intention in this topic is not exactly buy a personalized way in how outerra look. What i will try is take all the juice from your engine focusing in the little details around light and colors, always with real references as i do always in my job. Trying be as objetive as posible.

I will touch step by step all kind of situations. Day, afternoon, night, and hope can be useful for you developing (or not, if you dont think so, its alright, but i think i will make u trust in my taste a bit..). Its a "betatester" way of play ur engine and use my "deformation" profesional in it ). Its for fun and for take those renders to the limits..

SO now some RAW image from outerra. (with some trick i will explain after)note: with the old tool for lighting shadows i would get almost the same result of the reference pic.

Seriosly. Continuing with this. Now thaat i have a breath from my life and job.. I am near from my target result for the actual stage of outerra..

Important here.. Its not photoshop at all. Directly from outerra. So its posible to play (amazingly amazing..).The second image is Outerra default conf. And the third is my intermediate config.

Little details i tried to improve. The lack of color in outerra in general, i increased a bit the saturation, and the lack of sharpeness coveral when increase scattering (see the mountain at right). Also in this sharpening improved a bit the contrast. This image dont have low scattering, has about 30. So the shadows places will not suffer. This is my limit because increasing it more, the snow will loose the details. I will explain the tricks in the next days. But the important is show my target of the outerra looking so perfect. Even more than now ) Note: This image is not even doing any justice because look better in game.. In the procces from take screenshot from keyboard, save it in photoshop, and upload here, the image is not exactly the same as i see inside outerra, where is much better

Wow, I really like that third pic, less blue haze nearby, muted but still strong greens, and deep blue sky, although the sky in the first pic looks pretty good too.

Edit: Although, looking at this pic, shouldn't the blue haze actually appear closer than it does in the third image? Since that seems to reflect real life atmospheric perspective a bit better-

In the other picture the sun was up (14:30). Now i made a coincidence where sun fall just in front of the picture. This picture is in the same mode first picture from my last post. I just changed the hour and data sun position.

You should test your atmos and color setting at different altitudes and position on earth. I noticed one could look really good at a set location, and completely off at an other one. The best solution would be adaptive presets, switching from one config to an other, specified by latitude, biome, elevation, time of year, day or night...